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IAE Current Acquisition Strategy

The current IAE environment consists of eight systems—CCR, FedReg, EPLS, eSRS, FBO/FedTeDS, FPDS, ORCA, and WDOL.  PPIRS, while not the financial responsibility of IAE, takes functional direction from the IAE PMO.  (Part of IAE’s strategic planning includes addressing performance as a future integrated business service offering.) While the systems interact, there are no shared services between them.  Each system has its own database, unique data elements, reporting capabilities, user accounts, security certifications, etc. and is maintained by separate contractors.  The new IAE acquisition strategy, which will begin to be implemented through the Architecture and Operations Contract Support (AOCS) contract in 2009, will aggregate these services, ultimately moving these separate and disparate support systems to a single integrated architectural platform where common business services are shared. The focus will be on a truly integrated acquisition environment as opposed to just individual IAE applications.  

The new aggregation strategy focuses on both business services and data in the acquisition lifecycle.  The next generation of IAE services will further transform the environment, evolving to deliver seamless technology that works in the federal acquisition architecture emphasizing integration versus individual applications.  Consolidation of web services currently duplicated across the enterprise in each application, such as authentication, help desk, hosting, and web services, will be reduced or eliminated. The functions performed by the current IAE applications will be migrated to a set of acquisition business services that will be implemented consistent with Service Oriented Architecture concepts and technology and will leverage open source software and open source software development methodologies.

The next generation of aggregated IAE business services will make it easier for government contracting personnel, vendors, and citizens to do business with the government, while making it easier for IAE to adapt to new requirements.  For example, by aggregating all the vendor services in one application, vendors will only have to register once to access information currently held in systems such as CCR, ORCA, and eSRS.  Under the new acquisition strategy, all the IAE services will be available through one logon—“one stop shopping.”  Instead of having to log on to a variety of systems to review new solicitations or update their CCR information, vendors will enter a single logon at, for example, “Welcome to IAE” and that logon will allow them to update their company information, update their Reps & Certs, view solicitations, etc. across the IAE space.
 
Contracting personnel will be able to access IAE data from within their agency contract writing systems, eliminating the need to logon to several IAE applications.  Reporting services will be shared so users will only have to learn one way to obtain reports as opposed to having to learn the report writing system used by the individual systems.  In the new acquisition strategy, each agency will have one acquisition system that allows them to create new solicitations, review solicitations and review references, and all the acquisition and IAE aggregated services will be available on this acquisition monitor.  So as a contracting officer is building a solicitation in the CWS, all the information from the IAE systems is readily available.  This will greatly facilitate the contracting officers’ jobs.
It is anticipated that several other systems will become part of the IAE umbrella of services. Consequently, optional tasks planned may include the transition and/or migration of systems that support the Office of the Chief Acquisition Officer, systems that support the grants and loans process, systems that support the Administration’s stimulus funding and transparency reporting initiative, as well as systems that provide past performance information.
Each step of the IAE Conceptual Transition/Migration Schedule is graphically illustrated in Figure 1.